​US missile shield: ‘Russian Bear sleeping with one eye open’

William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages. He has lectured as Visiting Professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and delivers talks and private seminars around the world on subjects of current importance from economics to oil geopolitics to agribusiness. A widely discussed analyst of current political and economic developments, his provocative articles and analyses have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines and well-known international websites. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal and member of the editorial board of Eurasia magazine. Based in Frankfurt, Germany he may be reached via his website www.williamengdahl.com

Despite Russia’s recent efforts to broker a peaceful resolution
of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, as well as its good
offices in helping resolve the Iranian nuclear conflict with
Washington, the Obama administration is moving ahead with its
highly provocative nuclear Ballistic Missile ‘Defense’
(BMD) deployments around Russia. What we are not being told by
Western politicians is the fact that this action, far from
peaceful, brings the world closer than ever to nuclear war by
miscalculation.

On February 11, the first of four US advanced destroyers arrived in Rota, Spain. They will form a key part of
the US-controlled ballistic missile “shield.” The shield
is being sold as a protection for Europe against a possible
Iranian nuclear missile attack. The four ships, all of which are
planned to be in place over the coming two years, carry advanced
sensor capabilities and interceptor missiles which can detect and
shoot down ballistic missiles, according to NATO in Brussels.

The USS Donald Cook, a guided-missile destroyer of the United
States Navy, equipped with the high-tech Aegis combat ballistic
missile-defense system, docked in the southern port of Rota.
Rota, nominally commanded by a Spanish admiral, is fully
US-funded. It is the largest American military community in
Spain, housing US Navy and US Marine Corps personnel. It will be
permanently based there, according to NATO Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Fogh Rasmussen, who apparently understands little about nuclear
strategy, told the press, "The arrival of the USS Donald Cook
marks a step forward for NATO, for European security, and for
transatlantic cooperation.” At the November 2010 Lisbon NATO
summit, member governments agreed that NATO will develop a
missile defense capability to “protect all NATO European
populations and territory…Full capability is foreseen for the
first half of the next decade.”

Target Russia

Washington continues to insist that the US BMD deployment across
Europe targets possible Iranian missile attacks on Europe. The
reality, as Moscow has declared again and again since 2001, when
the Bush administration first announced the plan, is to target
the only nuclear arsenal on Earth capable of countering a US
nuclear attack, namely, Russia’s.

Indeed, BMD was top on the agenda of Defense Secretary Don
Rumsfeld and George W. Bush from the very first days of the
administration in 2001. Six months before the shocking events of
September 11, 2001, President Bush delivered a deliberately
deceptive speech on why the world needed US BMD systems. The
president insisted back then, almost 13 years ago, that the
purpose of his commitment to build a US missile shield was not
aimed at Russia: “Today's Russia is not our enemy” Bush
said. Instead, he insisted, the BMD system was needed only
against “terrorists,” against “rogue” nations
like Iraq, Iran or North Korea.

In fact, as military experts from Moscow to Beijing to Berlin
were quick to point out, no “terrorists” or small rogue
state had any such nuclear missile delivery capability. Nor do
they have today, according to US intelligence estimates.

Why then is Washington spending tens of billions if not hundreds
of billions of taxpayer dollars developing its BMD system?

The details of official US military policy reports demonstrated,
beyond doubt, that it had been the deliberate and unflinching
policy of Washington since the collapse of the Soviet Union to
systematically and relentlessly — throughout the administrations
of four US Presidents — to pursue nuclear primacy (unilateral
assured destruction) and the capacity for absolute, global
military dominance, what the Pentagon called Full Spectrum
Dominance.

US nuclear primacy

In a 2006 interview with London’s Financial Times, then US
Ambassador to NATO, former Cheney advisor Victoria Nuland— the
same person today disgraced by a video of her phone discussion
with US Ukraine Ambassador Pyatt on changing the Kiev government
(“Fuck the EU”) — declared that the US wanted a “globally
deployable military force” that would operate everywhere –
from Africa to the Middle East and beyond—“all across our
planet.”

Nuland then declared that it would include Japan and Australia as
well as the NATO nations. She added, “It’s a totally
different animal.” She was referring to BMD plans of
Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.

As nuclear strategy experts warned at that time, more than eight
years ago, deployment of even a minimal missile defense, under
the Pentagon’s then-new CONPLAN 8022, would give the US what the
military called, “Escalation Dominance”—the ability to
win a war at any level of violence, including nuclear war.

As the authors of a seminal Foreign Affairs article back in April
2006 noted: “Washington's continued refusal to eschew a first
strike and the country's development of a limited missile-defense
capability take on a new, and possibly more menacing, look… A
nuclear war-fighting capability remains a key component of the
United States' military doctrine and nuclear primacy remains a
goal of the United States.”

The two authors of the Foreign Affairs piece, Lieber and Press,
went on to outline the real consequences of the current
escalation of BMD in Europe (and as well against China in Japan):

“. . .[T]he sort of missile defenses that the United States
might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an
offensive context, not a defensive one—as an adjunct to a US
First Strike capability, not as a stand-alone shield. If the
United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or
China), the targeted country would be left with only a tiny
surviving arsenal — if any at all. At that point, even a
relatively modest or inefficient missile defense system might
well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes.”

They concluded, “Today, for the first time in almost 50
years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear
primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States
to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China
with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance
of power stems from a series of improvements in the United
States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's
arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear
forces.”

It’s little wonder then that Russia insists that the Washington
BMD deployment—and it is only Washington that controls the
missiles in BMD bases—is aggressive in the extreme. To serious
Russian protests, Washington responds with the even more hollow
lie that the European missile “shield” is aimed at Iran.

Today, in addition to the missile-loaded USS Donald Cook in Rota,
the US has BMD bases in Turkey, Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech
Republic, all aimed at Russia. How stupid are the EU governments?
How stupid is Washington?

Significantly, then, as Polish Defense Minister in 2007, Radek
Sikorski, negotiated for the US to place its BMD missiles on
Polish territory. Today as Polish Foreign Minister, Sikorski,
along with US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs
Victoria Nuland, are playing key roles in trying to sever Ukraine
from Russia to further isolate Russia from the world. What they
clearly fail to realize is that, even if the Russian Bear is
sleeping, she is sleeping with one eye open.

The Washington neo-conservatives’ agenda to reduce Russia to a
chaotic shard of a functioning nation is not the most intelligent
strategy of some in Washington. But then, neo-conservative
warhawks have never been renowned for their intelligence, more
for their brutal war strategies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya,
Syria and now, perhaps in a potential Third World War triggered
by their insistence on BMD aimed at the Russian nuclear strike
force.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.